Examples Of Greed In The Pardoner's Tale

There are seven deadly sins which consist of pride, envy, gluttony, lust, anger, greed, and sloth or laziness. To make the moral of a tale tempting for the reader to keep reading Chaucer includes one of the seven deadly sins in his tales to portray excitement throughout the entire tale making the theme to be surprising or unanticipated. Therefore, in the Pardoner’s Tale, the author uses greed which shows a variety of different literary elements being used to impact the theme of the tale. In the Pardoner's Tale, one of the seven deadly sins expressed in the writing is greed. For instance, when it states, “And here is gold, and that in great plenty, that’s to be parted here among us three. Nevertheless, if I can shape it so that it be parted only by us two,....”(Line 483-486). As a result, the use of greed impacts literary elements such as character. Chaucer uses that sin to develop the characters by making them selfish or self serving. Therefore, showing how the use of greed plays a key role to the characters in unfolding the moral of the tale. This sin is used to show how some people can be so self centered that they won’t even consider the idea of possibly helping someone else when knowing they can benefit better elsewhere.

To illustrate, without knowing each one is greedy the tone of the tale is cheerful when it states, “But each of them so glad was of that sight….for well we know that all this gold is ours,..”(Line 445-458). Clearly, each one of the men are equally as happy of the wonderful sight of gold that stands before them. However, the tone of the story changes to an approach of more aggressiveness when they include the sin greed. For example, when it states, “Nevertheless, if I can shape it so that it be parted only by us two,...”(Line 485-486). This shows that greed can change the tone of a story making it more compelling for the